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Boko Haram Recaptured Marte Town In Borno State

Boko Haram has
recaptured the town of Marte in Nigeria's northeastern Borno State, a local
official said Friday [May 15]. "Marte has today completely fallen under
the control of the [Boko Haram] insurgents, which to us is a huge
setback," Mustapha Zannah, deputy Borno State governor, told reporters.

Zannah also
claimed that 600 women and girls had been dispatched by Boko Haram as potential
suicide bombers to carry out bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State's provincial
capital. The deputy governor urged local residents to be patient with the
country's security agencies, despite the daily hardships caused by a
dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed by the local authorities.

"It's
unfortunate that we have experienced yet another attack in Maiduguri when we
had thought the insurgency had subsided following the military's capture of the
Sambisa Forest [a Boko Haram stronghold]," he said. "Every other
place should have been blocked so as to contain the insurgency... But this has
not been the case, as the insurgents have fled to other communities," he
added.

On Thursday,
the Nigerian authorities imposed a 24-hour curfew on Maiduguri hours after Boko
Haram attacked a local military barracks.

Zannah said
that local authorities had been opposed to the curfew when it was first
proposed by the military.

"But when
we received a security report that about 600 women had been kitted as suicide
bombers and are to be snuck into Maiduguri during the attack – coupled with the
gory pictures of some of the women who detonated themselves during the attack –
we had no option than to okay the curfew," he said.

"But the
curfew has [since] been relaxed… to ease the hardship; afterwards, it may be
reviewed," he noted.

The Nigerian
military – backed by Nigerien and Chadian troops – recently liberated all
territory captured earlier by Boko Haram in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. In the face of
the government's recent onslaught, Boko Haram militants are believed to have retreated
back into the Sambisa Forest, a notorious stronghold of the militant group.